Protestscapes and the art of protesting in Romania

In this article I will analyse the semiotics of the anti-corruption demonstrations in Romania (January - February 2017). I will introduce the concept of "protestscape" to analyse these local protest from a globale perspective. I define protestscapes as a language of mobility that employs rich semiotic resources within the context of protest.

What is a protescape?

In this article I introduce the concept of "protestscapes" as a language of mobility that employs rich semiotic resources within the context of protest. In doing so I focus on the anti-corruption demonstrations in Romania (January - February 2017).The term "protestscape" draws on Appadurai's notion of the dimensions of global cultural flows. In his book, Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization, Appadurai puts forward a framework for discussing the five dimensions of global cultural flows (ethnoscapes, ideoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes).

These are "collective", "imaginary", and "transnational" landscapes (Appadurai, 1996, p. 31). By adding the common suffix "-scape", the landscape becomes "fluid" and "irregular”. In addition, he indicates that “these are not understood in terms of objectively given relations that look the same from every angle of vision but, rather, that they are deeply perspectival constructs inflected by the historical, linguistic and political situatedness of different sorts of actors” (Appadurai, 1996, p. 33).

Contemporary globalized world is best understood as a "world of flows" comprising of "objects in motions" such as “ideas and ideologies, people and goods, images and messages, technologies and techniques” (Appadurai, 2000, p. 5). In this regard "protestscape" can be understood as landscapes resulting from creative and perspectival interactions between "objects in motions" in both online (digital activism, instant sharing of updates on the situation, using hashtags to build on the collection of content, creating memes, creating platform for protesters’ easy access to ready-made placards, posting and sharing pictures taken during the protests, creating events online, and so on) as well as offline environment (demonstration marches throughout the city, protest placards that change every day to keep up with the demands of the people, fixed banners on the streets and protest placards on the move, people with messages imprinted on their clothes, wearing badges, and so on). 

To describe “the protestscape" I analyse the linguistic landscape, that is the visible “bits of written language” in the public space (Blommaert & Maly, 2016: 1) and the semiotic landscape to approach more complex, multimodal signs.  The images referenced in this article were retrieved from various sources in the online environment. Pictures were all taken during the anti-corruption demonstrations in January and February 2017. I attempt to discuss the images by looking at how they present themselves (the type of material used, the choice of colours, the theme of message, etc.) their indexicality (what the sign points to in the context where it is produced), and their intertextuality (their relation to other texts).

The anti-corruption protests in Romania were peaceful, creative, and - even if without a formal leader - very well organized.

Altogether, the messages disseminated in the online and offline environment employed light-hearted humour, satirical remarks, creativity, witty slogans, playfulness, self-irony, and entailed references to various movies, books, some were retorts to controversial statements made by politicians, public confessions, and other messages were directly addressing fellow protesters.

The Romanian political context

In order to make sense of some of the images that will be presented in this article I start with explaining the social and political context that lead to these protests in the first place.

In December 2016 the Social- Democrats won the legislative elections held in Romania. This was a result of a low youth voter turnout and a higher voter turnout in the rural areas of Romania that historically favour the Social Democratic Party (PSD). No more than a month after they took office the PSD party, led by Liviu Dragnea, passed a decree to pardon certain convicted persons for acts of corruption such as bribery and trading of influence. With this law, PSD was trying to put to rest a growing anxiety amongst public officials that had been generated by the effectiveness of the anti-corruption institution (DNA).

The people were prompt to react to the new legislation threatening with large-scale demonstrations. Eventually, after two weeks of protesters flooding the streets and the media with their concerns and demands, the ruling cabinet annulled the decree. Even though the demands of the protesters were responded to (during January-February and previous demonstrations as well) there is still a high degree of distrust and general dissatisfaction with the current political class. This is largely cause by (among others) staggering inequality caused by corruption encountered at every level of society.

Dr.Octopus as the villain

In the Romanian “protestscape” Liviu Dragnea was one of the central-figures being constantly mocked by the protesters. The ruthless jokes and ironic references hint at his involvement with various illicit activities some for which he has been proven guilty and received a suspended two years jail sentence and at his influence within the party.

Fig 4. In response to the refugee crisis, Banksy made this artwork "The Son of a Migrant from Syria" in Calais in 2015 to show that even Steve Jobs is a migrant from Syria. Philippe Huguen—AFP/Getty Images. Reprinted from the Time website.

                                                    Figure 1

In Figure 1 Liviu Dragnea is pained as an octopus with red tentacles that read (from left to right): “PSD” (the ruling party),”ALDE” (the second ruling party), “Antena 3” (a private TV channel that is owned by a former public official and convict), “Government”, and “Romania TV” (a state-owed channel strongly associated with the ruling party). We can “read” the protest signs as Dragnea’s influence within Romania’s society and politics.

The octopus with Liviu Dragnea’s face as its body, comes on top of the protesters who protests against him and the corrupt government by holding up placards that read messages in support of democracy and against Liviu Dragnea (“We want democracy”, “Our grandparents voted for you, we don’t buy it”, “Thieves”, “Like thieves, in the night” “You angered the people” “Corruption kills” "We- the people, You- the corrupt" and so on).

“The protestcape” is intertwined with other landscapes and is created by the movement of and interactions between protesters – the “makers” of “protestscape”.

This protest sign breaks away from the rest by assuming a position of “summarizing” the multitude of protest signs that appeared in the public spaces during the demonstrations, and which cascaded though the "mediascape" (Appadurai, 1996).Therefore, “the protestcape” is intertwined with other landscapes and is created by the movement of and interactions between protesters – the “makers” of “protestscape”. Overall, this is an artful protest sign which appears to be made out of mixed media: cardboard, carioca, and paper. We could look at the protest sign as a piece of art in itself. It is an original painting with a strong underlying message.

                                                  Figure 2

Figure 2 is another sign that portrays Dragnea with tentacles, this time as the comic character Dr. Octopus known by his civilian identity as Otto Octavius – a scientist who evolved into a supernatural being after a scientific experiment went wrong and left him with two extra pairs of limbs which he controls with his mind. Filled with bitterness, resentment and a willingness to punish everyone around him, the villain that is Dr. Octopus becames a target for the pop culture superhero Spider-man. Dr. Octopus was defeated many times but he was always brought to life or managed to somehow survive. All in all, Dr. Octopus is a character proven difficult to completly annihilate. In terms of indexicality, the inability "to kill" the villain Dr. Dragnea could stand for the failure to replace a crooked political system that emerged as the aftermath of the fall of communism in Romania and which is currently backed up by a corrupt political class. 

What we see is Dr. Octopus – a globally recognized character - that receives a local feature the face of Liviu Dragnea and becomes Dr. Dragnea.

This multimodal sign contains various references that come together in this picture. Varis & Bloammaert (2015, p. 33) give a definition of memes that best reflects the process of “reading” a meme. In their opinion, “Memes – often multimodal signs in which images and texts are combined – would typically enable intense resemiotization as well, in that original signs are altered in various ways, generically germane – a kind of “substrate” recognisability would be maintained – but situationally adjusted and altered so as to produce very different communicative effects”.

What we see is Dr. Octopus - a globally recognized character - that receives a local feature the face of Liviu Dragnea and becomes Dr. Dragnea. This is also true for the text. The sign presents significant intertextuality as we can recognize Trump’s slogan during his presidential campaign but rephrased in a way so that it points at the local corruption against which people are protesting. Nevertheless, Trump was not the first to come up with this slogan. An earlier form of this catchphrase “Make America great again” was used by R Reagan in his run for presidency. 

This skilfully made image comes together nicely and depicts in a cheerfully coloured picture the supervillain status of Dragnea pointing at how corruption makes its way into the Romanian justice system. And by mean of text it hints at another leader whose policies are questionable.In contrast to Figure 1 where the sign discussed was home-made, this one is ready-made, easily downloadable from the Internet, free of charge on the website Art of Protest) with clear Do It Yourself instructions on how to print and assemble the pieces together. The sign is made out of plastic which makes it durable and sturdy, rain proof and snow proof. Thus, it is a reusable protest sign and non-biodegradable.

The website Art of Protest provides a wide selection of protest signs from which to choose from. This is a grass-root project that gathered chants during demonstrations and transformed them into artworks. They invite protesters to "Download. Print. Protest". As such is the case with most digital-age protests - preparation is done online (whether we speak of digital activism, organising events on social media, etc.) while demonstrations happen down the streets and in the squares. Similar websites emerged during demonstrations with the purpose to store in digital form the messages called out on the streets, slogans and images with placards.  

Batman to the rescue!

As opposed to graffiti, which is an out-lawed practice, the images projected on buildings have the same implications but without the legal consequences.

Fig. 1 Search results on Facebook Facebook

Fig. 2 Bianca Del Rio's Instagram page Instagram

Fig. 3 Facebook group for jobs Facebook